


Serpentine

by CandlesInTheWell



Category: Fallen London | Echo Bazaar
Genre: Dream-snakes, F/M, Ficlet, PWP, Possession
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-18
Updated: 2018-11-18
Packaged: 2019-08-25 09:01:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16658143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CandlesInTheWell/pseuds/CandlesInTheWell
Summary: A woman catches, or gets caught by, the attention of a possessed Glassman.





	Serpentine

The man is a stranger, though he smiles like he knows her. She never asked his name or offered hers, which means she could be anyone, here in a room she’s never seen before with satin sheets smooth against her skin. There’s a luxury in that, a freedom to more than match the danger – but it means _he_ could be anyone too, this conjuror and mirror-walker, and she knows she shouldn’t forget it. He leans over her, touches her face and asks, “Do you want to see yourself as you look in dreams?” 

His voice is smooth, with traces of an illusionist’s patter; it echoes strangely, as if he’s not the only one speaking, and she wonders, even as the sound thrills through her, just how unwise she’s been.

The fire is stoked high enough to leave the room almost too hot for comfort, and the scent of incense fills her nose, unfamiliar and potent enough to make her head spin. Ribbons curl around her wrists and up her arms like serpents, and she had known this game was foolish when she agreed to it, but she had agreed all the same. And now here she is, looking up into the cosmogone haze of a Glassman’s spectacles. She is mirrored in those lenses, and so are other things, fleeting and half-seen. She starts to avert her eyes, and finds her face cupped by a gloved hand, drawn back gently but inexorably to the sight of herself reflected in those lenses, flushed and bare in all her human softness.

 _Solid_ , this serpent-charmer had called her, and seemed to mean it as high praise; she had never thought she’d hear _your weight bends the world_ spoken with a heat that seemed as close to avarice as desire. But he had said it, gripping her hips as he pulled away her undergarments, pressing his mouth to the inside of her thigh. He had risen, led her back to the bed and down, and all the while he had spoken words that sank beneath the surface of consciousness as soon as they were heard, leaving only the memory of a trembling liquid warmth not at all like the heat from the fire. He’s speaking still.

“You would burn so bright there, a wisp of what is among all that is not. I would feed you on plums and honey” – _a thumb tracing over her lips, urging them open; she tasted spidersilk and thought of webs_ – “and I would taste of you” – _his mouth on her breast, tongue circling her nipple_ – “and let you taste of me. If I could, I’d make this body mine.”

“But you can’t,” she says, tugging against her bonds, dizzy from the incense and the insistent pulse of heat with nothing to quench it. “I didn’t agree to _that_.”

He laughs – a gust of breath tickling on her skin, strangely cool in the heated air of the room.

“We don’t play by _rules_ , sweet,” he says, shifting back, reaching down. “But I like you better like this. _So fair and full of flesh_. So much yourself.”

His hand slips between her spread legs, testing, his gloved fingers pressing up and in; she feels herself clench around the glide of smooth silk, and feels also the way that _he_ goes still, his tongue flicking out snakelike to taste the air. A flash of triumph in that, alongside the deep ache of pleasure – if this is a web, she’s not the only one caught. And she hears his voice again, that odd echo more noticeable yet: “And so very eager. Do they know the things you dream of, your staid associates?”

His sibilants are hissed, his face tight with what might be hunger, and if she wonders what his eyes would look like behind those glasses, she also knows why looking into them would be a mistake. So she closes her own eyes and turns aside, pressing her face into the pillow as her hips rise to the curl of his fingers inside her and the low rhythm of that voice in her ears.

“Does it shame you, this flesh? This blood?”

Even through closed eyes, she can feel him watching her, and every twist of his hand sends heat flooding through her, and leaves beads of sweat prickling on her skin. He sounds untouched and untouchable, though she knows now the lie of that. 

“Does it shame _you_?” she gasps, through uneven breath. “How much you want – what isn’t yours?”

There’s no answer, only a humid breeze stirring over her skin, a rustle of leaves and a warmth like sunlight remembered. She arches up, aching for touch, friction, for something lost and found again; she digs her hands into – mulched earth, fallen leaves, a garden overgrown and wild – and feels the breath catch in her throat as sudden fear and pleasure pull tight in the pit of her stomach. The ribbons wrapping her arms and legs seem to twine and move, and as the wave of that pleasure breaks over her, she shivers at the chill of his mouth against her ear and hears him whisper a secret she knows she won’t remember.

After it’s over, she falls back onto rumpled sheets, knowing it’s only firelight she’ll see if she looks, keeping her eyes closed all the same. The room is quiet, except for her breathing and the crackle of ordinary flames, and if she isn’t careful, she could drift off to sleep like this. A bad idea, she knows, though maybe she’d feel that light again. With no one touching her, she could almost imagine she’s alone – until she feels two silk-gloved fingers pressed against her lips, damp and smelling of her.

“Taste,” he says, and she remembers tales of another long ago serpent, a different garden lost. They _don’t_ know what she dreams of. They never have. And nor does he, but that jungle is there, and calling.

She opens her mouth and lets him in.


End file.
